And the thread goes silent (I agree with you).
Then another fanboy will come in and start spewing garbage again.
I have nothing against Apple. I love Apple. But I have a bone to pick with fanboys who spew misinformation and idiotic comments. They assume everyone is copying Apple without doing any research about anything that came before Apple.
Here's a tip for anyone who wants to state fact: Don't set the bar at Apple and only look forward. Take a moment to look backward and realize that maybe, just maybe, Apple wasn't first for everything. -_-
Not to mention some ideas are simply being raced at. Often times multiple companies want to implement an idea, and Apple is a huge company that is good at that... they simply get to an obvious idea first. Other companies may take longer to implement it well, but they aren't copying Apple, they're simply slower to come to a similar conclusion that everyone was trying to get at.
Thread isn't silent, are you deaf as well as blind? It's only garbage for the blind, I guess, because it's clear as day. Not only can it be plainly seen side by side but the notion of companies not attempting to copy Apple and that they are just late in the game is ludicrous. It's not so much that obviously people want thin gadgets so that's not enough to say it's copying - it's the way it's designed and implemented that makes it egregious enough to be alleged a copy.
Companies are emulating Apple, this is no secret. To think that they're all coming to the same conclusion is bull. It's just coincidence that Apple has consistently come out with their products first (iPod, iPhone, iPad, MBP, MBA) and then others come out with others that look similar afterwards? It's one thing to make a gadget thin. It's another to use the same colors in the same spots, the same kind of tapering, the same keyboard, the same button-less trackpad, etc.
It's like if I wore the same color shirt as you, it's not enough to say I copied you. But if I wore the same color shirt that has the colors in the same spots and had the same pants and shoes are the same brand then, yea, that's pretty darn close.
Apple wasn't first (I repeat: They were not first) with ultraportable laptops or the mp3 player or the touch screen phone but the industrial design of their products or user experience that they did come out with has no doubt been mimicked to a shockingly similar degree. It's too plain to see. I guarantee you that if the iPhone never came out, we would *not* have smartphones as they are today in both industrial design and apps/OS as they work now. If the iPod never came out, we would not have Zune from MS as it is now. If the iPad never came out, we would not have the Galaxy 10.1 as it exists.
Even if what you say is true that the same conclusion was reached - Apple still made it well and popularized it to make it a viable consumer-buying product - they prove that this exact formula is successful. Let's say other companies have a similar "conclusion/formula" but Apple's implementation clearly wins. So guess what? They copy them even one more iota because their formula works and it works better than their own original conclusion.
I'm not particularly saying this is not something companies should do (it's business) but it's quite plain to see that it happens.